Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Wild and wacky weather events like atmospheric rivers, derechos and bomb cyclones may seem new because of recent media coverage, but they’ve been known and named phenomena for quite some time in the history of meteorology and atmospheric science, speakers said Tuesday at the CatIQ Connect conference. What’s new is that they appear to be getting worse and more frequent as the climate changes. That means increasingly higher insured damage payouts for Canada’s P&C insurance industry.
Those water issues -- driven by climate change -- will see African countries grappling with food crises for decades to come, Seelan Gobalsamy, chief executive officer of South Africa’s Omnia Holdings Ltd., said in an interview Monday. Inadequate infrastructure to move key farming products will cause further problems, he said. “When the sun shines, it’s harsher and when there’s rain, it comes down in buckets,” the CEO said in Bloomberg’s office in Johannesburg, hours before one of the heaviest summer hailstorms the city has experienced in years. “If you ask me what our biggest risk is going forward, is it Russia’s war on Ukraine, or supply chain? It’s actually climate change.”
